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The Horror, The Horror

Apparently a large chunk of LA’s power grid went down last night (because it rained), and the internet connectivity in my hotel is down. So I’m in the lobby of the hotel right across the street, sucking down their free lobby wifi instead. Here’s a thought — when hotels right next door have reconnected to the InterTubes, you can’t blame a momentary overnight power outage for your lack of Internet.

Anyway, can’t hide out in this lobby for too long. If I’m hard to find online today, you know the reason. Well, that and the fact I’m, you know. On vacation.

Well, to be fair, from a utility grid perspective boundaries generally run along a street and not across. So it is feasible that your hotel could be down for utility reasons and the hotel across the street be up.
Now if it were side-by-side and had the same ISP, I’d call bull.

katster, are you kidding? Puny rainstorms knock out our power all the time. SNOW leads to pathetic pictures of people rolling around at Crissy Field in half an inch of snow. Plus, multiple-car pileups everywhere.

John, I’ve seen situations where one building is up and another building is down during outages because their blocks are on different parts of the power grid. So it’s possible your hotel isn’t merely doofy.

Coincidence? Our Comcast internet up in Silicon Valley went down last night and hasn’t been back up since. Good thing we have a spare internet provider coming to the house for just such emergencies. Yes, we are obsessive tech heads and damn proud of it.

It also might be whatever “runs” the internet at the hotel. A lot of hotels run a router that also manages users based on MAC addresses, and if that device went on the fritz the intertrons in hotel A could be down, but be working perfectly well in hotel B where they don’t use the goofy device.

Well your hotel may get internet access through the phone company and the one across the street may get it from a cable company. There are lots of reason for this to happen that are beyond the control of the hotel in which you’re registered.

I think it’s a standard rule that whatever the every-so-often extreme weather is for a location, it won’t cope well with it. So the UK for instance survives rain no problem but a big snowfall and everything stops, while SoCal falls apart when it rains.

Why is it that the worst response to inclement weather is to be found in areas where the worst weather is better than most other locale’s best weather?

The most critically-flawed component of infrastructure which inevitably fails is (IMNSHO) the kilo-and-a-half of ground sausage between the ears of locals. Sure, the power may drop, the net may go dark, but for a real charlie-foxtrot you need no more than an hour’s abnormal weather (typically rain) and suddenly the streets are flooded with dropped clues.

What have I to be thankful for? “Today’s forecast calls for partly cloudy, with light winds at 5-10mph out of the northwest.”

Happy Thanksgiving to all, and stay safe wherever you may travel today.

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